1. Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of driver education and more particularly to a driver education method that harmlessly mimics the effects of intoxication in the participants.
2. Description of Prior Art
Driver education methods for teaching students about the effects of driving while intoxicated with alcohol and/or drugs of abuse typically involve classroom lectures, presentions of accident statistics, graphic crash scene films and guest speakers including wheelchair-bound quadriplegic former drunk drivers and victims of accidents caused by intoxicated drivers. These methods share one serious drawback: they are vicarious in nature, i.e., the student at best can experience the reality of driving while intoxicated only through the eyes of the lecturer, the film narrator, or the accident victim.
In order to provide students with a more realistic experience, driver education instructors may use special computerized simulators which incorporate films taken from a camera angle that approximates the view of an intoxicated driver. Some of these simulators are quite capable of accurately measuring and scoring foot pressure; braking distances; reaction times; perceptual judgments and hesitations; foot, hand, and eye coordination; variations in steering or turning angles, etc. for each student. The simulators can rapidly analyze and graphically present all of the above driving data. Unfortunately, most current high school simulator equipment is too unsophisticated to approach the excellent realism of most current military aviation and tank driving simulators with their 3-6 degrees of freedom of movement and control. In addition to lack of technological sophistication, high school simulator equipment is costly, immobile, and typically confined to indoor classroom use.
Some driving instructors question whether practice sessions in a computerized, film-based simulator can actually transfer to real world learning experience for driver education students. For example, simulator films emphasize central vision with an exaggerated, unrealistic diminution of all normal peripheral visual-sensory-motor stimuli and clues, and gravitational sensations. These diminished stimuli and sensations are more realistically experienced by actually moving in real space. The present invention allows the driver education students to move in real space without diminished peripheral stimuli and gravitational sensations.
The following U.S. Pat. Nos. are germane to the subject matter of the present invention:
4,522,474 Slavin PA1 4,698,564 Slavin
Both references teach the construction of a monocular and a binocular spinning optics device and use thereof in a visual training program. The device employs rotating lens(es) constructed of stick-on type lens material such as fresnel prisms, polarizing material, colored filters, cylinder prisms, reflective material, etc. affixed to plano-plastic disc(s). The present invention utilizes an optics device having binocular, manually-spinnable fresnel prism lenses of the type disclosed by the patents above, which are referred to herein and incorporated by reference.